If you’re looking for a team you can trust to go win a huge game—such as a playoff game—on the road, don’t look at the top of the NFC standings.

The Carolina Panthers need to remind themselves of that in the aftermath of the 31-13 drubbing they absorbed in their super-hyped showdown with the New Orleans Saints Sunday night. The rematch is in two weeks in Charlotte.

That gives them a great chance to regain an edge in the NFC South … because the 10-3 Saints are a completely different team at home than on the road. Just as the one team ahead of them in the NFC, Seattle, proved to be earlier on Sunday in San Francisco. The second half of the season has proven that the elite of the conference can’t live without familiar surroundings.

The Panthers, now 9-4, may have seen their eight-game winning streak end in lopsided fashion, but the Saints took a very similar pounding last Monday night in Seattle, 34-7. Their quarterback, Drew Brees, was harassed all night just as Cam Newton was Sunday. The seemingly unstoppable offense went nowhere, and the defense was a sieve.

On Sunday at home, though, Brees picked the Panthers’ vaunted defense apart and put the game out of reach before the fourth quarter began.

It’s a running theme for the Saints: they also lost to the Jets on the road, the last game the Jets won for a month, and barley held off nosediving Atlanta in the Georgia Dome. It’s not the resume a Super Bowl contender should be building.

But it would be irrelevant if the Saints were to catch the Seahawks for home-field advantage throughout the NFC playoffs—now more plausible with Seattle’s loss at Candlestick Park to the same 49ers team they infamously drilled in noisy CenturyLink Field in September.

In their previous two games in the Superdome, the Saints ran up more than 600 yards and an NFL-record 40 first downs against Dallas, and caught the break of the season with the game-saving roughing-the-passer penalty against San Francisco.

Brees has 23 touchdown passes and just three interceptions in the Saints’ 7-0 run at home, including the Panthers win—but has 10 scores and five interceptions in six road games, where they are 3-3. They’ve topped 30 points five times at home, but have been held to 20 or fewer four times on the road.

And against the other serious Super Bowl contender they’ve played on the road? They let the Patriots march downfield for the winning touchdown in the final minute, taking a 30-27 loss in Week 6.

The Panthers not only have not had the wild home-road swings, they have arguably produced a better road win (in San Francisco) and home win (over New England) than the Saints have.

They will not be able to get away with just field goals until the closing minutes, or let Newton get sacked five times, as was the case Sunday night.

But the record says that they won’t be facing that same Saints team in two weeks.